Teeny Tiny Horse

Here's your nightly math! Just 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in. Your kids will love you for it.

Teeny Tiny Horse

Horses are as big as they are beautiful; it would be scary to have one chase after you. But not if that horse barely reaches your knees. In this video we see a 3-day-old baby miniature horse chasing its owner because it really, really wants to be petted. When his mama’s head pokes out in the bottom right corner of the screen, we see that she’s really short. too. Even as grown-ups, miniature horses grow to be only about 3 feet tall at the shoulders, and horses under 34 inches fall in their own special group. In the old days mini horses worked in mines, because they were strong for their size but were small enough to fit inside those tunnels. Today, though, most miniature horses enjoy being people’s pets. If you’re looking for something more interesting than a dog, you could have one of these — although you probably don’t want it trotting around your kitchen!

Wee ones: What numbers do you say to count a horse’s 4 legs?

Little kids: If this was the baby horse’s 3rd day of life and it was a Wednesday, on what day was it born? Bonus: If it’s just 1 foot tall at the shoulders and doubled that height twice, how tall would it be at the shoulders then?

Big kids: If the mama miniature horse is 46 inches tall in total, how much taller or shorter than you is that? Could she look you in the eye? Bonus: When fully grown, standard horses weigh about 1,000 pounds! If a miniature horse weighs just 1/5 of that, how much does it weigh?

About the Author

Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking while still in diapers, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.